Top Staff Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Leads technical vision and architecture for Card Tech while remaining hands-on in software development. Modernizes monoliths into microservices and event-driven platforms, establishes API and design standards, ensures scalable and secure implementations, and mentors engineering teams. The role requires expertise in cloud computing, data architecture, distributed systems, enterprise architecture, and AI-native development, along with leadership of cross-divisional initiatives and talent recruitment.

Leads technical vision and architecture for high-volume payment systems. Designs scalable, resilient distributed platforms, modernizes monoliths into microservices and event-driven architectures, establishes API and coding standards, and drives cross-domain engineering initiatives. Provides hands-on technical leadership, mentors engineers, communicates architecture decisions, and advises senior leaders on performance, scalability, operability, cloud, and data architecture.

Full‑stack staff engineer to ship web products end-to-end, iterate on and expand a suite of sales/CRM-focused tools, define engineering culture and best practices, and hire/mentor future engineers. Must move fast in a small team, engage with users, and solve new problems creatively.

Leads software engineering and architecture for Card Tech, combining hands-on development with technical mentorship. Defines technical vision, modernizes monoliths into microservices and event-driven platforms, establishes API and design standards, and drives scalable, secure, operable solutions. Partners across divisions, mentors senior engineers, evaluates AI-generated code, and leads architectural strategy and engineering excellence initiatives.

Develop and maintain internal full-stack applications using C#/Blazor or Python. Build CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation with GitLab, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Artifactory, and SonarQube. Partner with cross-functional teams to improve software delivery, code quality, security, compliance, and operational visibility. Implement scalable enterprise solutions, infrastructure as code, secure development practices, and DevSecOps workflows.

Leads technical vision and architecture for a network authorization switch, focusing on resilient, scalable systems. Designs and modernizes monoliths into microservices and event-driven platforms, establishes API and coding standards, and ensures performance, scalability, and operability. Provides hands-on engineering leadership, mentors engineers, drives cross-divisional initiatives, and advises on cloud, data, distributed systems, and enterprise architecture.

Lead technical vision and architecture for high-volume payment systems. Design scalable, resilient distributed platforms; modernize monoliths into microservices and event-driven architectures; establish API, coding, and design standards; ensure performance and operability; mentor engineers; guide cross-domain initiatives; and contribute hands-on across the software development lifecycle.

Provides enterprise-level technical leadership for large-scale software systems and shared platforms. Owns architecture, orchestration patterns, reliability, resilience, developer tooling, and technical roadmaps across multiple teams. Establishes engineering standards, mentors engineers, integrates vendor and internal platforms, and connects technology outcomes to business and reliability metrics. Requires extensive distributed-systems experience and expertise in fault tolerance, recovery design, and organization-wide technical leadership.

Leads technical strategy and architecture for a scalable advertising platform supporting video, server-side advertising, connected TV, programmatic advertising, and new ad formats. Designs distributed systems, evaluates ad technologies, improves reliability and observability, partners across engineering and product teams, mentors engineers, and guides long-term technical investments and roadmaps.

Staff Software Engineer responsible for designing scalable distributed systems and full-stack web applications supporting provider acquisition, onboarding, and marketplace supply growth. The role leads cross-team technical initiatives, shapes engineering strategy, mentors developers, and delivers provider-facing products from discovery through post-launch support. Experience with AI-assisted development workflows and technologies such as Node.js, React, TypeScript, Kafka, AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes is valued.

Lead architecture and hands-on engineering for Capital One’s Settlement platform modernization in the cloud. Define technical vision, design scalable and reliable systems, guide migration from monoliths to microservices and event-driven platforms, establish API and coding standards, and oversee technical quality. Mentor engineers, conduct architectural reviews, contribute proof-of-concept work, influence cross-divisional initiatives, and advance security, DevOps, performance, and operational excellence.

Lead the architecture and delivery of GitLab’s data products, including near-real-time data ingestion, knowledge graph integrations, data marketplaces, observability, and data-sharing APIs. Translate ambiguous 0-to-1 initiatives into roadmaps, resolve cross-team dependencies, ensure operational readiness across deployment surfaces, and mentor engineers. The role requires deep full-stack expertise, technical leadership, and experience with AI-powered orchestration and multi-tenant SaaS systems.

Build and own AI-assisted development infrastructure, including autonomous cloud development environments, MCP integrations, agent documentation, internal tooling, and enablement programs. Improve how engineering teams use AI coding agents across the organization, drive cross-team adoption, and stay current with AI productivity trends. The role requires strong software engineering, developer tooling, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and application development experience.

Design and evolve scalable referral, partner data, and patient booking systems. Lead complex technical projects across teams, make architecture and API decisions, improve security, performance, reliability, and scalability, and mentor engineers. Collaborate with product, design, engineering leadership, partners, and stakeholders while using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code to improve delivery velocity and quality.

Lead the technical vision, architecture, and delivery of Toast’s pricing engine across multiple teams. Design and operate highly available distributed systems, APIs, databases, and event-driven services at scale. Serve as the pricing domain expert, improve correctness and performance, lead incident response and reliability initiatives, mentor engineers, establish operational excellence, and align technical priorities with Product and engineering leadership.

Lead backend engineering strategy for Affirm’s search and recommendation platform. Design and launch highly available distributed systems, guide technical architecture and execution, improve team operations and reliability, establish engineering quality standards, collaborate with product, design, and analytics, and mentor engineers. The role focuses on search, recommendations, consumer shopping experiences, monetization, and scalable platform foundations.

Lead design and delivery of scalable, resilient distributed systems. Act as technical authority across teams, mentor engineers, drive architecture and CI/CD best practices, troubleshoot production issues, optimize performance, and enhance observability while writing production-grade Java.

Build and validate computational models of combustion, heat transfer, fluid flows, and fire/explosion scenarios using commercial CFD and FEA tools. Perform pre/post-processing, analyze results, document modeling approaches, run validation experiments, write technical reports, and communicate findings to internal and external stakeholders. Collaborate with industry and academics and present at conferences.

Lead backend engineering strategy for Affirm’s international Identity team. Design and launch highly available distributed systems supporting KYC, user lifecycle management, and identity decisioning. Drive technical planning, cross-functional collaboration, operational excellence, monitoring, testing, and on-call readiness. Establish engineering quality standards, influence architecture, mentor team members, and deliver scalable systems using Python or Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes.

Leads technical strategy, architecture, and implementation for cross-border money movement and digital asset payment systems. Designs scalable distributed platforms, resolves complex technical challenges, establishes engineering standards, reviews solutions across teams, and mentors engineers. Partners with product, architecture, operations, and engineering teams to deliver secure, resilient, compliant payment capabilities. Requires extensive Java and cloud experience, payment-platform expertise, event-driven architecture knowledge, and strong technical leadership.

Leads technical vision, architecture, modernization, and engineering quality for scalable payment platforms. Designs cloud, data, microservice, event-driven, and multi-tenant systems; establishes API and coding standards; reviews critical code; mentors engineers; partners with leadership; and drives cross-domain technical initiatives.

Provides hands-on technical leadership for mobile and terminal payment experiences. Defines architecture and long-term strategy across mobile apps, SDKs, payment terminals, and distributed backend systems. Leads complex reliability, performance, security, and compatibility initiatives; establishes APIs and integration patterns; aligns Product, Design, Legal, and external partners; mentors engineers; and advances observability, testing, and operational excellence.

Lead technical strategy and execution for foundational Trust and Safety systems supporting consumer risk and credit reporting. Design and operate highly available backend systems, improve reliability and monitoring, establish engineering standards, guide complex cross-functional initiatives, and mentor engineers. The role involves ownership of system architecture, technical planning, operational readiness, code quality, and team development.

Architect and build a high-performance trading platform for active traders. Develop responsive web interfaces integrating real-time market data, low-latency execution workflows, and advanced trading tools. Collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams on large-scale initiatives, emphasizing scalability, performance, API quality, maintainability, developer experience, and end-user usability.

Lead the technical vision and architectural evolution of Huntress’s Core Platform. Build complex Ruby on Rails features, solve scaling challenges, manage cross-team dependencies, drive architectural decisions, and oversee system lifecycle and technical risk. Mentor engineers, establish engineering excellence, collaborate with managers and product leaders, and help teams adopt AI coding tools responsibly.